Friday, October 31, 2008

Delay in opening Vatican Nazi records

The Vatican today said it would be ''at least six or seven years" before papers in the secret archives relating to Pope Pius XII, Nazism and the Second World War could be opened to scholars.

Last week, a group of Catholic and Jewish scholars wrote to The Times to express "deep concern" over Vatican plans to beatify Pius XII, the step before sainthood.

They said the wartime pontiff had "condemned the effects of war on innocent victims but did not single out the persecution of Jews, either during or after the Holocaust".

The scholars called for archives relating to Pius XII's wartime record to be opened "with deliberate speed" since "more extensive study is required".

In an audience with Pope Benedict XVI today, Rabbi David Rosen of the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations also called for the archives to be opened.

Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said the request was "understandable and justifiable", but it was ''unrealistic'' to think that the archives could be opened soon. He said that the archive involved "about 16 million papers".

The Vatican was working on the archives for 1939-1945, but ''specialised staff is limited,'' Father Lombardi said.

He quoted the head of the Vatican Secret Archive, Monsignor Sergio Pagano, as stating that with the present workforce, the estimated timeframe for making the papers available for study was " at least 6-7 years".

Pope Benedict, who has said he hopes to visit Israel, praised Pius XII on the 50th anniversary of his death this month and backed his beatification, but without setting a date.+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Disclaimer

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The Vatican has refused yet again to open its wartime archives until at least 2014. What are they hiding? We believe that much of the hesitation has to do with Vatican dealings with the Axis and in particular the ultra Catholic fascist regimes of Ustasha Croatia, Hungary and Slovakia which murdered Jews, Roma, and Serbs by the hundreds of thousands. There is also the unresolved issue of post Second World War Vatican participation in the so called ratlines through which thousands of Axis war criminals escaped to Spain, South America, and the Middle East including the Nazi butchers Eichmann, Barbie, Pavelic, Artukovic,and Luburic.

Some Vatican gold is alleged to have a connection to Ustasha loot obtained by the Vatican Bank after the Second World War and is the subject of our ongoing lawsuit in Federal Court. The plaintiffs are asking the Vatican Bank and Franciscan Order of Friars Minor to account for loot laundered after World War II by Ustasha war criminals, Vatican official Fr. Krunoslav Draganovic, and the Franciscan Treasurer, Fr. Dominik Mandic.

Plaintiffs in the Alperin lawsuit have documented numerous Vatican gold transactions that require closer scrutiny and have made these documents available on the Internet for others interested in the Vatican and its wartime business dealings. The released documents indicate the Vatican opened a gold account at the Federal Reserve Bank in 1940 which it added to in 1942. While millions starved and died, Vatican gold was safe in New York. According to a Federal Reserve analyst, the Vatican's protectors in 1940 were Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.